Career planning: How to be more popular at work

Your first step is to understand why to be popular at work is important to you. If your goal is to be in touch with more people and learn from them, if you want to become a nicer person to whom the others want to be close, to help or invite for lunch, these tips are for you. By following all of them, you will be not only more prepared to run your career planning with primacy, you will also make friends beyond the office:

1. Pay attention to the people

Most people don’t listen, they are just waiting for their turn to talk. From the moment you deny to be that way, you stand out in the crowd. Divert the focus from you, your weekend, your stories and start listening to what people want to tell about what they did, what they love and what they don’t bear. Stop what you’re doing and make eye contact. And if it’s non-invasive, ask for more. By showing interest in who people are, you become more interesting – and so your career planning.

2. Be natural

Another prerequisite for you to be more popular at work is not to force yourself to change your personality. Don’t make jokes if that’s not your style, don’t smile if it’s not sincere, and don’t praise if you don’t believe what you’re saying. If you are known for saying what you think or you are too shy, a good idea is to greet people by name, say good morning and goodbye. You don’t need to greet one by one, shaking hands. Better than that is collaborating when you see someone in trouble, pay a coffee at lunch or even get a glass of water to your colleague.

3. Put yourself in the shoes of the others

Don’t turn away people because of hasty conclusions. Someone who has been unkind to you may be having a very bad day. Someone who ignored you may be dealing with pressure and you don’t have any idea. Assume that there’s a good side of your colleagues and, under any circumstances, take part in gossip. It’s an illusion to think that you will belong to the group. Instead, try to understand the other person’s problems. If you conclude that you can’t be friends, keep the warmth. You know you will never have affinity with the whole company and it’s okay, after all, it only proves that each one has its own style.

4. Bring good ideas

This is a very important step because it can transform the way people see you. What is missing for you to be successful at what you do? Some ideas simple to implement can be powerful enough to improve the way you and your team work. For example, here at Runrun.it, we have recently defined the goals of the quarter and the members of each team were free to bring project ideas to achieve them. What about you? Why don’t you study some solutions and present the best ones to your managers? This can make you deservedly more popular.

Do you want an example of a good idea, simple to implement? Runrun.it. Imagine an online tool able to organize the workflow, make the dialogue more agile and transparent and increase the productivity of your team. Imagine if this tool also measured the costs and the hours invested in the projects. It’s what Runrun.it does. Try it for free: http://runrun.it